Mark Richt on recruiting Deshaun Watson to UGA: “I told (OC) Mike Bobo, this guy is going to take someone to a national championship.” Richt said he was convinced as soon as Clemson signed Watson, they’d be great. His take on Watson’s TD pass vs Georgia in his first career game: “I was glad they took him out after that.”

The mishandling of Watson’s recruitment by Bobo and Richt is one of the most frustrating things about the Richt era. He was in our backyard, grew up a Georgia fan, and would have been a perfect fit as a dual-threat QB for our pro-style offense. Sure, we weren’t going to start running a bunch of zone read option, but he had the same skill set as DJ Shockley and may be a better pure passer. It was a case of a day late and a dollar short and probably ended up as a contributing factor to CMR’s departure from Athens.

Exactly, Ramsey was supposed to be SEC caliber but didn’t develop. He has the arm. Park also had big name offers, which transferred when Lambert came in.

Bobo did not adapt to a dual threat. Murray was supposed to be more of a run threat than we saw, and he did have some big runs at Tenn. and Auburn. Murray did very well but I think he could have done more with his legs.

I will say it. UGA cannot sign every star that comes out of Georgia. Not all stars in Georgia want to play in Athens either. This is just Richt pimping an ACC Star…nothing more, or less. He was high on a Vandy QB a few years back…

What you say is all true but Watson was a Georgia fan and a special talent player. Richt and Bobo were either lazy or dumb in waiting to recruit him and letting Dabo get him locked down like he did. While it’s true Georgia can’t sing every star in the state, we should easily sign the ones who are great players AND are lifetime Georgia fans.

I follow recruiting pretty closely. I never recall hearing anything about Watson growing up a UGA fan. if anything, he initial interests were with Clemson due to a family friend. His interests were playing in an offense tailor made for his skill sets, which was what he was offered at Clemson by the OC that left after his freshman year to get a head coaching gig in texas.

Richt and Bobo whiffed on signing him, but they certainly made every effort to flip him. Heck, Bobo was at nearly ever home basketball game he played in his senior year trying to flip him. He was there often his junior year trying to get him.

At the end of the day, they thought Brice Ramsey was an SEC caliber quarterback with the skillset to be a starter(they were wrong). They planned to triangulate efforts on signing Ramsey first, then Watson second, as Ramsey was a year ahead.

Ultimately, Watson committed his sophomore year to Clemson and could not be swayed. That is to his credit. Richt and crew needed a QB the year Ramsey signed. They were afraid if they went all out for Watson before Ramsey signed, he’d flip to Bama or elsewhere.

this story is akin to the Cam Newton as a tight end story that just won’t go away. Cam Newton was recruited as a QB to UGA until the day he told them he’d never come to UGA to sit behind Stafford. He thought he could beat out Tim Tebow so that’s where he went. We tried as a last ditch effort to recruit him as a tight end just to get the guy in Athens.

The Watson decision decided Richt’s career in Athens, but to blame lack of effort as the reason behind it is asinine and typical of comments.

How about blaming Richt’s stubbornness? Watson was well aware that we would never deviate from running the same old pro-style, stand in the pocket offense that we always ran. He was wise to make the decision that he did.

Deshawn threw one pass that was impressive BUT on the series when Clem’son scored with him at QB he threw into double coverage and was lucky it wasn’t intercepted. Rushing stats …. 5 rushes for minus 3 yards, and yes I know that includes sacks but it indicates he clearly held on to the ball too long. I don’t change to a read option offense just to land him. The pro-style offense is why kids who hope to go pro come to Georgia.

UGA vs. clemson was a HUGE game for both programs. Watson not only played in his first game as a tiger, but threw a TD too.

Meanwhile, in CMR’s mind he was:
A) questioning why clemson didn’t redshirt Watson. How could he be of any use without at least a year and a half of learning the O.
B) wondering why Watson was playing QB and not TE.
C) postulating whether Watson could catch the ball in the punt safe position.
D) lamenting that if we only had an open roster spot we could’ve signed Watson. Oh wait…

Because Richt hated black quarterbacks and still can’t live with himself for ever playing DJ or Charlie Ward at QB. He is also still kicking himself for playing Stafford as a freshman as well as Gurley, Chubb, Keith Marshall, and Malcom Mitchell.

I love how Richt bashers take one example of an error run with it. Richt had his faults but the QB position wasn’t one of them. He also learned from the mistake of redshirting Knowshon.

I don’t think it means what you think it means (I’ve been wanting to use that little piece of condescending snark for a while). Not being a threat to throw the ball downfield means “pretty freaking bad” to me.

I have no idea what you give a shit about or why. But most objective people would see the fact that those leagues had almost zero interest in Mason as additional proof (beyond his play at UGA) that we were subpar at QB that year.

However, it was largely covered up by 2 absolutely dynamite running backs. Take those guys off that 2014 team and we would have had QB play similar to we had in the 2nd half of last year.

You don’t think passer rating is somewhat dependent on the offense’s ability to run the ball? It’s a hell of a lot easier to throw the ball if the defense has to key heavily on limiting an explosive running game.

I think a really good QB will usually have at least a decent passer rating, regardless of his team’s ability to run the ball. But a mediocre-to-bad QB can have wild fluctuations in passer rating based on his team’s ability to run.

I haven’t seen anyone actively cheering for us to lose or hope for recruits to go elsewhere. Comments like anon’s are the ones we should all call out as ridiculous and make our fan base look like a bunch of entitled babies.

From reading some of these comments above… I’ve come to the conclusion that human being’s must not be capable of making any decisions of their own until after they get to college, and that CMR was the worst coach in the history of UGA and just didn’t like Watson for some reason and didn’t want him at UGA…. Got it.

Quote Of The Day

“But outside of that, the biggest advantage you can have is have good leadership, have a veteran football team, and when you’ve got that, it doesn’t matter whether you have spring practice or not. When you don’t have that, it’s tougher, when you don’t have leadership and you don’t have the experience at certain positions.”— Kirby Smart, Dawgs247, 3/31/20